The town has its own local Post Office, a Border Patrol facility, a church, a VFW post, and multiple specialized workshops such as a cabinet shop and metal shop.
Page A4From§Eachthe early bird edition — 31 August 2026
California town of 35 buildings goes on the market as California's biggest utilities, insurers head for the hills
As it ran on the front
Somewhere in California there's a town, thirty-five buildings, church included probably, general store, the whole set, and it's for sale, all of it, like a used car with one owner. Read that twice. Not a building. A town. And in the same week, the state's biggest utilities are watching their own stock get taken out back, and the insurance companies — the guys whose entire business model is 'we bet you don't have the disaster, and if you do, we still come out ahead' — those guys are the ones running. When the insurance industry, which built its whole civilization on pricing risk so precisely they never lose, decides the risk isn't worth pricing anymore, that's not caution. That's a diagnosis.
Here's the con, plain: for years the sales pitch on the utility side was 'trust the grid, we've got it handled,' and the sales pitch on the insurance side was 'trust the policy, we've got you covered,' and now both of those sentences are quietly being replaced with 'the shares fell off a cliff' and 'insurers smell blood.' Smell blood. That's their phrase, not mine, that's how the people who insure your house for a living describe the market they're in. You don't smell blood near something healthy.…
…(cont) And the town — thirty-five buildings, on the market, presumably because whatever was supposed to keep a town like that going, didn't. Somebody priced the whole thing and decided cash out beats staying. That's not a real estate story. That's a preview. When the actuaries leave and the whole block goes up for sale at once, that's the fine print finally getting read out loud, in public, at scale.
Nobody in either of these stories is lying to you, that's what gets me. The utility didn't lie about its stock price. The insurers didn't lie about smelling blood. The realtor listing the town isn't lying either. Everybody's telling the truth for once, all at the same time, and the truth is that the bill for the last twenty years is coming due, and it's coming due to whoever's still standing there when the check arrives, which, notice, is never the guy who wrote the risk model.
“One whole town for sale, utilities cratering, insurers running for the exits — nobody's hiding it, they're saying it in the press release. When the people who make money betting on disaster start folding their bets, that's not politics, that's a forecast. Whoever's still living there when the money leaves is the one holding the bill.”
“California's regulatory environment is what's driving insurers out, that's a policy problem, not a climate problem, and frankly a well-run market would — well, the market is responding exactly the way markets respond to risk, which, I suppose, is the climate problem, stated as a market signal. The town sale is unrelated. Probably unrelated.”
The receipts
California’s biggest utility was rocked Monday after lawmakers dealt Gov. Gavin Newsom a blow over a sweeping wildfire liability overhaul.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.